Mobile communication systems developed to provide the subscribers with voice communication services on the move. With the rapid advance of technologies, the mobile communication systems have evolved to support high speed data communication services as well as the standard voice communication services. However, the limited resource and user requirements for higher speed services in the current mobile communication system spur the evolution to more advanced mobile communication systems.
As one of the next generation mobile communication system to meet such requirements, the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) has standardized Long Term Evolution (LTE) and LTE-Advanced (LTE-A). LTE is a technology designed to provide high speed packet-based communication of up to 100 Mbps. In order to accomplish the aim, a discussion is being held on several schemes: one scheme for reducing the number of nodes located in a communication path by simplifying a configuration of the network, and another scheme for maximally approximating wireless protocols to wireless channels.
Meanwhile, if a transmission range (hereinafter, referred to as coverage) increases, it is possible to reduce performance degradation of a terminal at the cell boundary as well as reduce a number of base stations to be deployed. Particularly, since the transmit power of the terminal is more constrained than that of the base station, improvement of uplink coverage is important.
There is therefore a need of researches for increasing uplink coverage.